Phil Spector Murder Finally Goes to Jury

Oh, did I say murder? That hasn't been proven. Spector claims that the woman in question took his gun after she slept with him at his house to commit suicide.

Who knows, maybe it's even true. Who would want to admit that a woman ate a bullet after sleeping with you?

Spector's defense maintains that Clarkson was depressed and turned his .38 Special on herself. Prosecutors allege that he shot her in the mouth after she tried to leave his Alhambra mansion.

In a final argument before the panelists filed into the jury room, a prosecutor seized on the actress' chance meeting with Spector three hours before her death at a Sunset Strip Club where she was a VIP room hostess.

As he had in the 2007 trial that ended in a hung jury, Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson asked jurors to imagine they could speak one sentence to the actress before she got in Spector's chauffeured Mercedes-Benz.

"You are all thinking the same thing," Jackson said. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he continued, "You'd say, 'Lana, whatever you do, don't go.' "

He said the impulse to warn Clarkson came from jurors' knowledge of "the real Phil Spector" -- a "demon" with a history of menacing women with guns.

Spector, dressed in a black suit and chartreuse tie, remained stoic, even when the prosecutor pointed an accusing finger at him.

"The reality is that Phil Spector had his hand on that gun and Lana Clarkson ended up dead," he said.

posted by Ace at 01:16 PM

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